Beauty…

If you want to decorate cookies but don’t have the time or inclination to roll and shape and bake the cookies, buy plain store bought cookies like Salerno Butter Cookies, Ginger Snaps or Nilla Wafers and decorate those.

Here’s a Salerno Butter Cookie dressed up as a wreath using Royal Icing.

Update: I had mentioned this to Kate in an email, but should post it here too. You don’t have to be afraid of Royal Icing anymore! (Raw egg whites) Better’n’Eggs (and other brands including store brands) have pasteurized egg whites in a milk carton. 1/3 cup = 2 large egg whites. You can make as much Royal Icing as you like, and use what’s left over for healthy egg white omelettes. The nice thing about this is that there is no yolk waste.

Royal Icing

1 pound powdered sugar
1/3 cup egg whites (or two egg whites)
1/2 teaspoon cream of tartar (helps to bind the egg whites)
2 teaspoons of water

Mix it all in a mixer. You can make different consistencies. add some more powdered sugar to make it a bit firmer (good for the green on the above cookies, for using a star tip for Santa’s beard, the fur on his coat and hat, etc.) If you want to cover a cookie in icing, use a round tip and draw a line around the outside, then use slightly more watery icing to fill in. The icing will spread out, but won’t go over the side because of the icing dam. A toothpick dipped into food coloring can be used to “draw” features in newly poured icing (works well with white).

Try to use gel coloring if possible (Wilton makes this) but you can use the liquid drops from the supermarket. If you do, it will thin the icing so be prepared to add a little more powdered sugar if you want firmer icing.

Royal icing can be kept in sealed plastic containers at room temperature for days. Mix different colors in different containers. If you don’t have cake decorating tools, you can still pipe icing dams using a plastic sandwich bag with a low corner just nipped off.

Raven in her hand-knit, festive holiday sweater.

This was one of many in a Poinsettia “tree” I saw yesterday. Color has been played with a bit because the camera phone made it too orange.

“This is the highest level of income inequality we have seen since 1929,”Mrs Clinton said.

She goes on to say that she isn’t against wealth or business, but that the middle class needs help.

If you listen to the democrats there is no middle class. Barack Obama thinks that rich starts at $97,500 – the amount over which an individual is not required to continue contributing to Social Security for that year (SS Cap).

Other democrats believe that poor should be anything below $84,000 (witness the ‘4-times-the-poverty-rate’ upper limit for SCHIP).

That kind of leaves the middle class at $84,001 to $97,499. No wonder she’s worried about income inequality and the middle class. There aren’t many there in that very narrow window… (and I’m in the Poor section)

Income inequality is essential to the economy. Without income inequality there’s nothing better to strive for. All during my life I have moved up and down in income. I have, however, striven for more. All of us want more for ourselves and our families. Some of us work hard to achieve that. Others expect it to be given to them. The actual value of the “more” is greater when you work for it. When you wait around to have it given to you, its value is greatly diminished.

Another thing that the democrats don’t seem to take into account is that the truly rich (the one percent that they’re always talking about) have money that isn’t income, so it isn’t counted as income or taxed as income. Interest earned is taxed as income, but the principle is not.

You can have mega dollars in accounts all over the world, invested or just in bank accounts. You may “earn” $50,000 a year in “income” from those accounts. You can still live a million dollar lifestyle because you can tap the principle. That’s kind of where a consumption tax instead of an income tax comes into play. That’s where Dems can get the “rich” to pay “their fair share” of the taxes… They have more money, they buy more stuff. And higher cost stuff. Where Joe Blow maybe buys a 10-year-old used car for his 16-year-old (if Joe doesn’t make Joe, Jr. buy his own car), John Dough buys Junior a Brand-spanking-new Hummer, or Corvette, or Tesla.

07:55, December 7, 1941, [tag]Pearl Harbor[/tag], Hawaii. The attack begins.

This is a photo taken at Pearl Harbor on that day. It is one of several at Snopes.com regarding a story of [tag]photos[/tag] found in a Brownie camera in an old footlocker. The photos are archival and weren’t found in the camera, but are well worth looking at.

Chris at A Large Regular again points us to this National Geographic multimedia map and timeline.

The drivers’ license for illegal aliens thing: Proponents say that if they have a license they’ll get insurance and the roads will be safer, blah, blah, blah. But insurance isn’t required for a license, it’s required for registration. A license isn’t necessary for registration either. I mean, Grandma may not be able to drive anymore, but she may maintain the registration and insurance on her car for someone else to drive her around. People who have their licenses suspended or revoked can still have a car registered (and some drive anyway – loss of license doesn’t mean loss of the knowledge or physical ability to drive).

Granting a drivers’ license to an illegal alien will not result in safer roads, it’ll just dilute the value of the license for citizens.

Today at church the message was about heaven. The pastor had asked some children what they thought heaven would be like and he played the video for us.

The best was one little girl who said:

In Heaven, Jesus will build me a house and I hope it’s made of chocolate with lickable walls.